Fear in a Handful of Dust
by burnmedown
Summary: While recovering from a minor injury, Clay gets assigned to serve as interpreter for Romeo in rural Africa, with Kairos also along as EOD. When shit hits the fan and Spenser gets left behind, it's up to Summer to negotiate an uneasy truce between Bravo and Romeo - at least for long enough to get Clay back home alive.
1. Chapter 1

I had no intention of posting this until maybe this weekend, but I got off work an hour early and finished the first chapter and figured I might as well put it up now. It also kind of got away from me so it's pretty long. Oops.

* * *

Honestly, Summer kind of suspected from the start that this mission was probably going to suck. He just failed to anticipate how _much_ it was going to suck.

Getting assigned to accompany Romeo team to rural Africa to help them take down a prolific and notorious bomb-maker believed to be hiding out in a likely rigged home? Not a big deal. That's Summer's job, the role he plays, and he's good at it and enjoys it.

The point where the mission started to go haywire was when Clay Spenser unexpectedly got appended to it.

That's not because of anything about Spenser himself, really. While Summer doesn't know the man particularly well, he respects him, and they've always worked well enough together in their limited interactions. No, the problem is more the rest of Bravo, and their reaction to having their youngest team member sent off on a mission without them - particularly when he isn't fully healthy.

At the moment, Summer is starting to get a headache from listening to Eric Blackburn go in endless conversational circles with a very frustrated Jason Hayes. Blackburn keeps reiterating the same basic facts: while Spenser hasn't officially been cleared for duty after sustaining a moderate concussion, it's been almost two weeks since his last reported dizzy spell; he's accompanying Romeo in an interpreter capacity only and will be protected just as any other 'terp would be; his role in the mission could be crucial to preventing civilian casualties, as he is the only available outsider who speaks the local language.

Hayes keeps responding with the basic equivalent of 'La la la I can't hear you.' Bottom line is that he does _not_ want his injured team member, rookie really, going into the field without him and the rest of Bravo to watch his back.

Blackburn: _He's not technically even going into the field, Jason. He's interpreting. That's it. Not a combat role._

Hayes: _Yeah, but…_

Finally, mercifully, before Summer's headache can finish escalating, Blackburn tires of the discussion, probably well after nearly any other commander would have, and puts his foot down: The choice has been made, and he doesn't have the power to change it. Given that the bomb-maker is believed to have married a local woman and to have had multiple children with her, Clay is possibly the only person who can prevent this op from turning into a very ugly tragedy. Clay will not be required, expected or allowed to do any actual fighting. The conversation is now over.

Summer's relief at that proclamation is short-lived, because Hayes's attention immediately turns to him. In a clipped tone, Bravo's team leader says, "You watch out for him, you got it?"

Summer manages to keep his sigh internal. "I'll do the best I can, but if this place is rigged like we expect, I might be a little busy." He hesitates, then goes with full honesty: "I can't split my focus when lives depend on me getting my job done, and doing it right."

Jason backs off a little, apparently seeing the truth in that. "I get it. Wouldn't expect you to. Just ... as much as you can, okay?"

Summer's answering nod draws an approving clap on the shoulder from Hayes, and then they both move on. Summer spends the next few hours poring over every piece of information he can find regarding the target's known methods. He commits diagrams and details and materials to a memory that borders on photographic. Summer may give off a chill, laid-back vibe (especially when it annoys uptight Texans), but part of the way he maintains that calm is by making sure he is always as prepared as he can be.

And when surprises _do_ arise (because in this line of work it's not always possible to be fully prepared), well, he handles those too. His mama was a trauma surgeon back in the day and a damn good one. He inherited her steady hands and her ability to adjust on the fly, to slow a critical situation down and think through it.

He knows she's proud of her son, of the way he has put into use the gifts she passed down. He is also aware that his job terrifies the hell out of her because she knows in such gory, wrenching, vivid detail exactly what could end up happening to the baby she bore and raised.

She never tried to stop him, though, because that's not who his mama is. His father is the free spirit, the kind, sensitive hippie; his mother raised her children to stand on their own two feet, to build their own lives, to make a difference.

Summer is trying his best to honor both of those legacies.

After the long flight to Africa, he and Spenser meet up with Romeo team to go over the details of the mission. Summer is not overly familiar with Romeo, though he has met them all a few times before. The team leader is named Bridger: medium height, salt-and-pepper hair, entirely average-looking but for the unnervingly intense gaze. He doesn't talk much but gets listened to when he does. Seems to run a pretty tight ship.

Summer can roll with that for a few days; just has to hope Spenser can too. He has picked up the impression that Hayes maybe gives the kid a little more leeway than some team leaders might.

That hope lasts about 30 seconds, right up until Bridger lays out the infil plan.

From the corner of his eye, Summer sees Clay start to fidget like he's got fire ants on his ass. Spenser holds out for a minute, then finally comments, "Lot of open ground to be crossing right at the end there, isn't it?"

The entirety of Romeo team looks at him. Bridger straightens up, and for a moment there's tense silence. Then Romeo's leader asks softly, "You got a better idea?"

Everyone in the room knows that the answer he's looking for is 'No.' It's not the one he receives.

Spenser gives that insolent shrug and half-smirk he's perfected. "Personally? I'd come in through the gully and then the trees, back here. Better cover. Less likely to get picked off from a window."

Bridger stares him down. The man's stillness is unnerving; Summer is good at reading body language, but Bridger holds himself so neutrally and precisely that he has almost no tells _to_ read.

"Believe it or not, I am aware of the benefits of cover. If you had looked more carefully, you might have noticed the goat pens right on the other side of those trees. Have you met a goat before, Spenser?"

Clay isn't smirking anymore. He gives a short nod.

"Then you'll know that they are loud and tend to notice the presence of strangers. Now, something else you should probably know is that interpreters don't make tactical decisions." Bridger's tone is calm as steel. "Do you understand that?"

With visible effort, Clay clenches his jaw shut on whatever response he wants to give. "Yep," he says through gritted teeth.

"Good." Bridger holds his gaze for a moment longer before turning away, leaving some awkward shifting in his wake.

Damn.

Summer sends up a silent (and probably futile) prayer that Spenser will keep his mouth shut until he needs to use it to interpret.

The mission is scheduled for just after dusk, with a two-hour truck ride leading up to it. There's a sort of frosty, silent truce that holds up until about halfway through the journey, when Bridger suddenly looks over at Clay and says, "I knew your dad. Back when he was operating."

A beat, then Spenser responds sardonically, "I'm sorry."

Bridger nods almost imperceptibly. For a moment, Summer thinks maybe that will be the end of it, but then the master chief adds, "Must have been nice, starting out a step ahead like that. Second generation."

A muscle jumps in Spenser's jaw. He asks with an edge to his voice, "Have you met Jason Hayes?"

Even Bridger's impassive face shows a hint of surprise at the seeming non sequitur. "Sure, plenty of times. Operated with him before."

"He strike you as a guy who'd draft somebody because of who their father was?"

Bridger's eyebrows go up a bit. "No. Never said he did."

Spenser isn't having it. He crosses his arms over his chest, leans back, and closes his eyes. The conversation is clearly over.

Bridger watches Clay for a minute, wearing a barely perceptible crease on his forehead. Then he gives a faint shrug, apparently decides to let it go, and joins the kid in napping the rest of the way.

All this secondhand tension is straight-up unhealthy. Summer meditates to clear his mind of it.

The village where Romeo's target resides is really more like a compound, just a scattered collection of houses nestled up against the base of a small range of scrubland hills. There's only one way in or out: a loosely graveled dirt track that barely qualifies as a road.

As dusk falls, they slow to a crawl, ease the truck off the road, conceal it in a thick stand of brush and trees off to the east, and then hike the rest of the way in. It's full dark by the time they reach the village.

The house where the bomb-maker reportedly lives is dark and silent, with only maybe the faintest hint of light emanating from somewhere deep inside. Getting in and out quietly may be a tall order, but it would be ideal; they've got no sure way of knowing just how many hostiles these houses hold nor what said hostiles might be armed with, and would rather not find out by being forced to engage them all.

As expected, the bomb-maker's house is rigged.

And there's a problem. One Summer very much did not anticipate.

It's much too simple. This asshole bomb-maker, he knows what he's doing. Some of his designs might even be called elegant if he didn't use them to blow the limbs off innocent men, women and children.

This? This almost looks perfunctory. Takes Summer all of maybe 10 or 15 mikes to defuse.

He sits back, trying to shake the sense that something is very off, and announces that he's done. Bridger tries to call in their pending entry and discovers that, while local comms seem to still be working, he can't contact base, a revelation that twists the vague uneasy feeling under Summer's breastbone into a hard knot. A glance at Clay shows that he looks just as unsettled as Summer feels.

Bridger shrugs it off, saying some long-range interference isn't unexpected. Summer checks and re-checks to make sure he didn't miss something, and then in they go, leaving a couple members of Romeo outside as security.

The house doesn't contain any further bombs. It also doesn't seem to contain any people.

Spenser calls out in the local language, loud enough to be heard but soft enough to hopefully avoid waking the neighbors. There's no answer from the darkness. They sweep through, clearing rooms. Still nothing.

Something is wrong here. Something has to be wrong.

There's an upstairs. Summer is helping clear it, debating whether he should give voice to his intuition, when Valdez, Romeo's 2IC, comes on comms sounding near panic. "_Where's Spenser?"_

Bridger stops. "What do you mean 'where's Spenser'?"

"_I swear to God he was right here!"_

Bridger mumbles something unintelligible. They finish clearing the final room upstairs and head back down. Romeo's team leader asks, "Is there a basement or something? How long has he been missing?"

"_I don't know, and I don't know,"_ Valdez responds tightly.

The group is just joining back up in the main room downstairs when the mystery of the missing Spenser is solved by his voice on comms, sounding breathless and urgent. "_Romeo One, we've got a problem. Large enemy force inbound, ETA 10 mikes."_

To Summer's surprise, Bridger doesn't stop to question or argue, instead immediately ordering his team, "Collapse positions. Fall back to exfil." His voice thrums with knife-edged tension when he asks, "Spenser, what's your location?"

There's a brief pause. "_Ah, hill to the west. Had to go high to get a look down the road."_

Summer is close enough to see the exact moment when Bridger's face goes a shade paler.

To get to that hill, Spenser had to cross the road ... the same road that's about to be overrun. They've got minutes before he's cut off from them.

"Get to exfil, now," Bridger snaps. "Run."

"_Copy."_ Judging by his breathing, Clay is already on the move.

It's not good enough. He doesn't make it in time.

The rest of the team does. By the time the enemy force arrives, they've disappeared into the concealment of the trees to the east side of the road. They make it to the truck. Spenser isn't there.

They wait through a handful of minutes that stretch like hours. He doesn't show up. He doesn't answer their calls over the radio.

Summer says, quietly, "If he's trapped on the other side of that…"

"But he can just go parallel to the road until he passes them and then cross, right?" Valdez asks. "Right, Bridge?"

Bridger's face is grim. "Not much cover on that side. Hillsides are pretty barren. Unless he gets real damn lucky, they're gonna spot him."

Valdez rocks forward, then back. "Okay. Okay, then what do we do? We wait or-"

From behind them, down the road, there's gunfire. Bridger swears under his breath.

Summer's heart pounds in his ears.

_You watch out for him, you got it?_

They have to go back.

Clay couldn't just pretend to have a functioning brain cell for one single night and stay his ass where he was supposed to be, so now he's up against it, and they have to go back for him.

Bridger wavers, and for a moment Summer thinks he's going to give the order to pull out.

The moment passes. Bridger swears quietly again, orders two of his guys to stay with the truck; everyone else to come with him.

They can't take on the whole damn force. Everyone involved is aware of that. But the concealment on this side of the road is good, and if they can just get near enough … if Clay can somehow survive long enough to make it across to them…

As they get closer, the gunfire dies away to nothing, to a windswept silence. Nausea bubbles in Summer's stomach at the thought of why they might have stopped shooting.

The line of enemy vehicles has filled the road leading out of the village, parked all in a row. Everything is eerily silent. There's no one in sight. No Clay. No combatants.

They make it nearly to the edge of the road without needing to leave the trees. Gun up, Summer sweeps his night vision toward the village, up the hillside, back down the road behind the line of enemy vehicles. Nothing. It's like Spenser disappeared into a black hole and took everyone else with him, and it feels every bit as wrong as that empty shell of a house did.

Bridger takes a single step outside the treeline, and the night explodes into shrapnel and fire.

Summer comes back to himself shaking and semi-blinded, scrabbling through brush for his gun. There's shooting and yelling and the crackle of flames and he can't figure out where any of it is coming from. His ears are ringing.

VBIED. One of those trucks was a goddamn VBIED.

Someone - _Valdez_ \- grabs Summer by the arm, drags him back into the trees. One of the others has Bridger slung over his shoulder. Stumbling and stunned, they run, dodging bullets, tripping over branches. By some miracle, they fade into the jungle. They make it back to the truck, and the road ahead sits empty.

Valdez is 2IC. It's his call.

Fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt, the man looks down at Bridger, who's unconscious, a mess of blood and shrapnel.

When Valdez looks back up, Summer already knows what he's going to say to his teammate in the driver's seat. It's the only thing he _can_ say.

"Go. Get us the hell out of here."


	2. Chapter 2

In hindsight, Clay maybe should have told someone where he was going. Kairos, at least, because while the EOD may not officially be a member of Bravo, he is familiar and Clay trusts him in a way he's having trouble doing with Romeo. Especially Romeo's master chief.

It's just that Clay _knows_ something is wrong, and he can see that Summer does too. Under normal circumstances, he'd go straight to the team leader and lay out his concerns, but he is pretty sure that will get him nowhere on this mission.

_Interpreters don't make tactical decisions._

Jesus, he misses Jason.

Clay is really not in the mood to get reminded of his place on this team (or, more accurately, _not_ on this team) or to listen to more snide comments about his father, so he makes what is quite possibly a very stupid decision, and he slips off into the night while Valdez isn't paying attention.

The thing about interpreters is that you only need them when there's someone to interpret for, so Clay tells himself it's not like he really even has a role to fill at the moment anyway. Might as well find an alternate means of making himself useful.

And the thing about Clay Spenser is that he is very, very fast, even in unfriendly terrain. He's willing to bet he could outrun any member of Romeo. While Clay is aware that he might occasionally have a few ego issues, this particular subject isn't a matter of overconfidence; it's just fact. With any luck, he'll be back before anyone notices he's gone - and if he _doesn't_ make it back quickly, it will hopefully be because he's found something that will save everyone's asses, which generally makes it easier to get forgiven for doing stupid shit like slinking off without letting anyone know where you're going.

He doesn't even intend to go that far. Just through the scrub brush to the slightly higher ground where it starts to clear on the lower slope of the hill to the west. All he wants is a cursory glance down the road, just to make sure it's clear; that the crushing sense of impending danger is just his mind playing tricks on him.

There are no vehicles, no movement visible on the portion of the road he can see … but further down, around a bend and beyond the trees, there's a glow, incandescently white through the night vision.

Well, there's _something_ out there; he just doesn't know yet what it is. Clay hesitates, debating calling it in right now. Cursing quietly, he pulls his hand away from the radio and scrambles farther up the hill. Before he reports, he wants to know what the hell it is he's reporting.

He's in so much shit. Bridger is going to throttle him. Then, after they get back from this mission, Jason is _also_ going to throttle him. Hell, Sonny might, too.

Clay figures out the exact moment when they realize he's missing, because Valdez immediately starts trying to contact him over comms, his words a bit choppy with interference at this distance. Clay ignores him for a minute, pouring his focus into climbing as the hillside grows steeper, the soil more crumbly and dry. He'll respond once he knows what kind of answer he's going to give.

When Clay finally gets high up enough to figure out what it is he's looking at, everything - the impatient voices in his ear; the clammy night air; the faint warning throb heralding one of those post-concussion headaches he's been getting lately - fades away.

At least now he knows it wasn't his mind playing tricks on him.

Praying he'll be able to get through the interference, Clay keys his radio and says, "Romeo One, we've got a problem. Large enemy force inbound, ETA 10 mikes."

For the few seconds of silence that follow, he's afraid the message didn't make it. His heart drops straight into his gut, because he is pretty sure he hasn't got a prayer of beating that convoy to the village, and if the team isn't forewarned, everybody could die. Kairos could die. And there wouldn't be anything Clay could do but watch it happen.

Even if Bridger _did_ hear him, what if he isn't willing to listen? They don't have time to argue about it.

As it turns out, they don't need it. Clay damn near collapses with relief when he hears the master chief quickly give the order to move to exfil.

And then he realizes he needs to get there too, and he's significantly farther away than everyone else is at the moment.

By the time Bridger, sounding almost genuinely concerned, gives the clipped order to run, Clay is already on the move. The loose, crumbly soil is less of an obstacle going down than it was on the way up; Clay ends up just throwing his weight back and half-sliding most of the way down the slope to level ground.

His top speed isn't good enough. Clay reaches the bottom of the hill and flings himself flat, face down in a stand of shin-high shrubs, just as the lead vehicle in the convoy rounds the bend and comes into view, the wash of its bright headlights spilling across the land and illuminating his terrifyingly precarious hiding place.

He hopes, prays, that the vehicles will just keep going. That they'll pull on into the village - though he's not even sure there's room for them all to park there - and leave the road dark and empty and silent so that he can cross it to safety.

No such luck. They pull to a stop in a line once the lead truck reaches the edge of the village, and heavily armed combatants start spilling out.

Clay stays perfectly still, controlling his breathing, listening to the sound of his heartbeat drumming in his ears. He's pretty sure they haven't spotted him yet, because if they had he'd be dead, but discovery is probably pretty inevitable at this point. They're already starting to spread out a bit, looking around in a way that makes it clear they know there's someone here to be hunting.

Once this shitstorm is over, Romeo is probably going to need to have a word with whoever planned this mission for them, because it's sure as hell looking like their target knew they were coming.

If Clay stays where he is, he'll be found. If he tries to move, he'll be shot.

Ultimately, he can't bring himself to just stay there and wait for the inevitable. Coiled with tension, he watches until everyone seems to be looking away, and then he springs to his feet and takes off, hoping to make it around the curve of the hillside, conceal himself behind the outward jut of the slope.

He makes it less than halfway before they spot him and start shooting.

The punch to the side isn't really a surprise, and at first it doesn't even hurt. Any pain that might exist is swallowed up in the roar of adrenaline. But it's followed by a second, harder impact near the middle of his back, and suddenly Clay's legs seem to disappear from beneath him. His momentum carries him forward a couple more stumbling steps before he goes down hard, choking on a mouthful of dirt.

With his legs at least temporarily out of commission, he uses his arms to drag himself forward, roll himself over, finally landing in a shallow depression in the earth. Shaking, Clay stares at the sky. His lungs burn and his chest heaves, but he forces himself to breathe through his nose, as quietly as possible.

It's dry season, so the sky is full of stars, just like the ones he used to look at with his grandparents when he was a kid. They're beautiful.

The shooting has stopped. He doesn't hear any signs of pursuit. Eventually, he gets himself together enough to cautiously push up to an elbow and peer down toward the road.

Maybe they saw him go down and now think he's dead, because the combatants, at least the ones he can see, don't even look like they're interested in him anymore. They're all headed toward the village, disappearing into the houses, leaving the vehicles abandoned. He knows they'll be setting up sniper nests at the windows, so he stays low and still to avoid making himself a target.

Where the hell is Summer and Romeo team? Definitely not still in the village. If they've got any sense, they went straight to exfil and are already gone. Or maybe they're there waiting for him, not knowing he's trapped and bleeding, that he isn't going to make it.

_Go,_ Clay urges them silently. Moving slow and careful, he reaches for his radio to say it aloud, but then realizes he must have lost it back where he fell.

It's a flicker of motion in the tangle of trees across the road that gives it away: Romeo team isn't gone, and they aren't waiting at the exfil location. They came back for him.

That realization brings equal measures of hope and terror: hope because he hasn't been abandoned after all, and fear because something is off here, as it's been from the beginning of this goddamn mission. The stillness and silence feel manufactured, falsely layered atop the danger, constructed to draw them out.

_Don't fall for it,_ Clay pleads silently. _Just go._

Across the road, Bridger steps out of the trees.

If Clay gives away his position right now, he's probably dead. Without taking the time to think about it, he pushes himself up to his knees anyway, abandoning the flimsy cover of the earth and the shrubs.

Too late. His yell of warning is swallowed up in the apocalyptic, earth-shaking _boom_ of the VBIED.

The shock wave throws Clay onto his back. His head throbs; for a moment, he can't see. His legs are still full of pins and needles but they more or less work, so he crawls, dragging himself through dirt and scrub brush until he tumbles into a dry streambed that cuts a narrow channel between two steep hillsides. The pain in his side feels wet and viciously sharp, as though his flesh has been filled full of broken glass; his back is a dull, bruised ache that radiates all the way through him, but he doesn't think he's bleeding from there, at least.

He pushes through it all, stays low and keeps moving until there's a hill between him and the road where the world exploded.

In the aftermath of the bomb, there has been no further sound. No shooting; no yells of triumph from the enemy combatants. Clay chooses to believe that means Romeo made it out, that they were far enough away from the explosion, that they're safe now. He has to believe that. The alternative - that they all died, needlessly, pointlessly, trying to save his stupid ass - is not a possibility he can even let himself entertain right now.

Reasonably confident he's alone for the moment, Clay flattens his palms against the side of the dirt bank and uses it to push himself to his feet, where he wavers for a moment as his knees try to buckle. There's still some lingering numbness, but he takes a step, then another, and manages not to fall. His back is obviously bruised to hell but the vest must have caught the bullet. As long as he can remain ambulatory, that will have to be good enough for now.

Pressing his hand against the seeping, filthy, dirt-caked wound in his side, Clay breaks into a stumbling run. He's in wilderness now. Up ahead, where the land slopes down to a broad, gentle valley, looms a thick grove of trees. Should be shelter there, and maybe a water source if he's lucky. A place to rest, regroup, and try to come up with a plan to survive until someone can come get him - because they will. DEVGRU doesn't leave their men behind. Not even if they're dead. Which he might be by the time they get here.

God, he misses his team, with a sharpness that rivals the pain of the bullet wound. He wants Sonny's teasing, Jason's probing tactical questions, Ray's insightful gaze, Trent's efficient care, Brock's quiet support.

He knows how to do this, how to push through pain, survive the unsurvivable. He is trained and equipped and fully capable.

He just isn't supposed to have to do this alone. And it sucks even more than he would have anticipated.

_Get it together. Keep moving._

Alone and hurting, he staggers onward, toward the deeper dark of the treeline.


	3. Chapter 3

Sonny is actually willing to admit to himself that it doesn't really even make sense to be as bothered as he is about Spenser getting sent off on his own.

For starters, Clay isn't technically even on his own. He's with Romeo, and they're a good, solid team. Bridger might be a bit of a hardass, and there's a significant chance he and Spenser will butt heads at some point during the mission (or possibly several points), but Sonny knows him as a damn good leader who takes care of his guys.

Then there's the fact that Clay Spenser isn't some child for them to be getting all overprotective of. He barely even qualifies as a rookie anymore. He's an experienced SEAL and has more than proven himself capable as a tier one operator.

Hell, they don't even really have the excuse of having been put on edge by Clay's recent injury, because it … wasn't that scary. None of his teammates were watching at the exact moment when he hit his head, and he immediately shook it off and seemed completely fine afterward. Didn't even admit to the concussion until a full day later, after the mission was already over, when the nausea, headache and dizziness put him on his ass.

So yeah, Sonny is well aware there's no logical reason to feel so uneasy. He simply does anyway.

It's just that Bravo is an incredibly close-knit team, possibly even more so than many of the others, and Sonny doesn't love the idea of Clay being out in the field without someone who really knows him watching his back. The Romeo guys, they're good operators, but they haven't learned through long experience exactly when and how they should rein Clay in to keep him from doing something heroic and reckless and stupid.

And the injury does complicate things. What if shit hits the fan and Spenser, despite his temporary noncombatant role, feels honor-bound to join the fight (because he probably would)? He's not up for that, not yet, and there's nobody with him who Sonny trusts to pull him back when he inevitably forgets his own limitations.

Kairos doesn't count. That's not really anything against him; he's a good EOD, solid guy, though Sonny would never admit that out loud. He just hasn't run with Bravo all that much and therefore doesn't know Clay the way the rest of them do.

When they first drafted Spenser, he was a tremendous pain in the ass. Now he's … still a pain in the ass, but he's _theirs._ It just doesn't feel right having him off somewhere, possibly in danger, without them.

If Sonny is honest with himself, part of this worry might just be his brain eating itself alive without something to focus on. He has a tendency to go a little stir-crazy during downtime, so it's a relief when his phone chirps at him, because now at least he'll have something to do.

That sense of relief lasts right up until Blackburn, his tone and expression carefully, overly neutral, tells them they're being sent to West Africa.

It doesn't take any of them long to put the pieces together.

For a moment, nobody reacts. The room is very quiet. Then Sonny hears himself ask calmly, "Something happen with Romeo?"

Blackburn's expression doesn't really change at all, but he briefly closes his eyes. For all that everything and everybody in the room is motionless, Sonny feels a strange internal jolt, as though the bottom has dropped out of the world.

Eric opens his eyes again, draws a steadying breath, and replies levelly, "Yes. Don't know a lot of details yet, but the mission went bad."

Now it's Jason who leans forward, gaze focused and intent. "Eric. If something has happened to Clay, you need to tell us."

Blackburn's hesitation is so brief that it's only barely detectable. "Like I said, not clear on all the details. All I know for sure is that the mission failed and Spenser is missing."

'Missing' doesn't mean dead. Sonny anchors himself on that thought. 'Missing' just means they have to go get him and bring him home.

Trent thinks to ask, "Kairos? Romeo team?"

"Bridger is in bad shape and they're airlifting him out. Sounds like Kairos and the others are more or less okay. They'll be meeting us on the ground."

"So they - they're okay, but they _left_ him?" Sonny can hear the incredulousness in his own voice, can see it reflected on his teammates' faces. He takes back every good thing he's ever said or thought about Romeo team. Kairos, too.

Blackburn immediately tries to rein it in. "I trust they wouldn't have left without Spenser unless there was no other choice. Let's hear the whole story before we jump to any conclusions, okay?"

Sonny shuts his mouth, but internally he is preparing to win Olympic gold medals in conclusion-jumping and blame-laying, and ain't nobody can stop him.

Jason, his voice tight with anger, says, "I _told_ you I didn't want him going on this mission. You promised-"

Blackburn faces up to it. Doesn't back down in the slightest. Even and calm, he responds, "I know what I said, Jason. Decision wasn't mine to make, but for what it's worth, I am sorry for how it's turned out." He pauses. "We'll bring him home."

"We better," Jason shoots back, tone hovering just this side of threatening. Blackburn just nods, lets it go.

Sonny, sticking to his mouth-shut policy, manages to keep himself from pointing out that just bringing Clay home isn't good enough. They need to bring him home _alive_. Need him to still be the cocky, confident pain in the ass who left here just a few days ago.

The flight to Africa is miserable. There's too much anxious anger and not enough space for it. Jason is pissed at Blackburn and is expressing it by perching firmly on the line between passive-aggression and just straight-up aggression. Sonny is pissed at _everybody,_ at the world in general. Brock has disappeared somewhere with his dog, which means he probably feels the same and is coping with it by angrily napping.

There's no real chance their first interaction with Romeo is going to be anything but a disaster. Blackburn obviously anticipates this and tries, without much success, to put himself between the two teams.

Jason, in that choppy, impatient tone he uses when he's about ready to start knocking heads together, snaps at Romeo's 2IC, "You want to tell me why you left my guy behind?"

Valdez is sitting with his knees apart, hands clasped together between them, chin to his chest. Without looking up, he responds in an exhausted, uncharacteristically emotionless tone, "Back off, Hayes."

Jason gives a humorless laugh. "Back off. Back off? We _trusted_ you to have his back, and-" He's getting louder, leaning in closer.

Valdez rockets to his feet, eyes bloodshot and half-wild, the blank facade falling away in an instant. "Bridge might die, you know that?" He matches Jason's volume. "Our team leader is in critical condition and they airlifted him out because he got blown up trying to go back for your guy, who shouldn't have run off on his own in the first place. So yeah, Hayes, I made the decision I had to make to keep us _all_ from dying. I'm sorry Spenser got left behind, but right now you need to back. the fuck. off." His voice drops to a dangerous whisper at the end.

The tension in the room is so thick it's hard to breathe. Trent wedges himself between the two men, making a barrier Jason probably _could_ go through, but won't.

When it comes down to it, Trent usually has to be the level head in the room when tempers are high. An outsider might expect Brock to fill that role just based on how quiet he is, but push him far enough and you'll learn better.

"Take a walk, Jason," Blackburn orders in a tone he rarely uses, a steel-hard voice that permits no argument.

Without looking at anybody, Hayes shakes Trent off and stalks away.

Valdez drops straight back down like all the bones have fallen out of his legs. He covers his face with his hands.

Part of Sonny wants to yell at him like Jason did. The other part of Bravo Three is well aware of how he'd be feeling right now if it were Hayes in critical condition rather than Bridger, so he pushes away the anger and gives the man some space.

It helps that Sonny immediately spots another target for his anger and his questions.

Summer Kairos has appeared in the back of the room. The normally relaxed, go-with-the-flow Californian looks about as out of place as Sonny has ever seen him. In this scenario, Kairos has no real ties to Romeo other than having run with them once, and isn't truly a member of Bravo either, but he's inextricably tangled up in this whole mess and caught between them all the same.

Sonny tells himself to be calm. Be reasonable. Take Blackburn's words to heart.

"Way I recall it," he says, "Jason asked you to look out for Spenser. You want to share exactly what happened out there?"

Kairos shakes his head a little, starts to open his mouth. Before he can give an answer, more sniping breaks out, this time between Brock and Romeo's medic, who is obviously on edge and has apparently made some cutting comment about loose cannons that he probably should have kept to himself.

The atmosphere of this place is nigh unbearable. Bravo is an open wound right now, and so is Romeo, and all they're doing is ripping at each other's scabs.

At Sonny's side, Summer takes a deep breath and calls out with surprising authority, "Enough!"

Everyone goes quiet. Everyone looks at him.

Kairos turns to Blackburn. "Do you have access to the drone footage from the mission?"

Eric nods.

"You think we could take a look at it?"

The glance Blackburn gives Kairos is thoughtful, calculating and maybe just a bit surprised. "You know," the commander says, "I think that might not be a bad idea."

So all of them end up crammed around a conference table, frostily sharing space while watching the footage pick up from the point just before Clay left the house alone.

Summer, unprompted, takes up narrating. "Our comms range was limited, so we couldn't contact base for ISR. This was about the point where Clay must have really started thinking that something was wrong." They watch as Spenser's infrared signature breaks away from the building, crosses a stretch of open ground at impressive speed, and heads up the side of the hill.

Sonny's heart clenches in his chest, because that's his brother, and he was _right there,_ but there's nothing they can do now to make it turn out any different.

Why does that damn idiot kid always have to try to be such a hero?

The feed zooms out, showing what Clay was seeing, and Kairos taps the image of the convoy. "If he hadn't given us advance warning of this, we might all be dead right now. But going up that hill left him cut off from the rest of us. When he couldn't get to exfil in time, Bridger made the call to go back for him."

As the footage proceeds, as the inevitable draws nearer, Sonny's gut churns more and more. He doesn't want to watch this. He wants this to not have happened.

Between the distance and the somewhat distorted view provided by the thermal imaging, it's hard to make out a lot of detail - but there's enough to tell when the shooting starts. And that after it does, Clay doesn't make it more than a few more steps before going down hard.

Jesus _Christ._

He's out there alone, and he's more than likely been shot.

Spenser doesn't appear to make it back to his feet - though that could partly just be because of all the bullets flying - but he does keep moving, obviously seeking cover. Then the hot, bright blast of the VBIED that took out Bridger washes out the screen, and by the time it clears, Clay has disappeared. Blackburn solemnly explains that they weren't able to find him again before the drone started running out of fuel and had to be called back.

Captured? Gone to ground? At this point, there's no damn way to know, and Sonny feels like the uncertainty might eat him alive.

After the feed ends, they sit in dejected silence, staring at the blank screen. Then Summer says, soft but clear enough to carry throughout the still room, "Clay didn't screw up when he followed his instincts and gave us a warning that might have saved our asses. Bridger didn't screw up when he decided to go back for him. Valdez didn't screw up when he made the decision to save the lives he could save at that moment."

He looks around the table, meeting gaze after gaze. "I'm guessing we've all been doing this long enough to know that sometimes you can do everything right, _everything,_ and still have a situation go very bad, very fast."

Shuffling feet. A few reluctant nods.

"Well, it happened, and now we're all hurting from it. We've done what we can for Bridger. That's out of our hands right now. But Clay is still out there, and he needs us to bring him home." He pauses, looks around the table again. "Think maybe we ought to stop slinging blame and start trying to figure out how we're going to do that?"

The tension in the room cracks, gives way. There are more nods now. Even Jason looks slightly chastised.

Who'd have thought. Summer's magic hippie skills apparently extend to making people at least kind of get along.

Kairos gives a faint, pleased smile and pushes back his chair. "Okay then. Let's get to work."


	4. Chapter 4

Clay pushes himself as far as he can. By the time he finally stops somewhere deep in the forested valley, his head is spinning with pain and exhaustion, and he keeps tripping over nothing because his feet are dragging so badly. He's been forcing himself to keep going because he's afraid he won't be able to get back up again if he sits down even for a minute.

When he hears the soft melody of a stream running through the trees up ahead, Clay decides the water source gives him a good excuse to let himself rest. Hand pressed to his side, he eases down beside the creek with a sound that's embarrassingly close to a whimper. At least there's nobody out here to laugh at him for it.

Now that he's put as much distance as he can manage between himself and any potential pursuers, Clay knows he needs to push through the headache and brain fog and evaluate his situation. Figure out how badly he's hurt and do what he can to get himself stabilized. Plan his next steps and determine what resources he can use to accomplish them.

His back still aches and he's getting occasional flashes of tingling down his legs, but he isn't paralyzed and doesn't seem to be losing blood from there, so Clay figures his priority has to be the wound in his side. The bullet apparently entered at the back of his flank and then came out the front, hopefully missing everything important on its way through but leaving a significant exit wound.

The good news is that the bleeding seems to have mostly stopped. The bad news is that the exit wound is absolutely packed full of dirt, and cleaning it out is going to be a _bitch._

Clay's current position is well concealed by a solid canopy of trees overhead, so he risks flicking on a small light to take a better look at the stream. During the wet months of the year it would be deeper and probably a little on the muddy side, but right now, in the heart of dry season, it's a bit less than knee deep, very clear, and almost cold.

He hesitates, weighing his options. What are the odds this water is more contaminated than the soil that's already packed into his wound?

Based on what he remembers from looking at satellite photos of the region, there are no villages or livestock pens upstream, meaning there hopefully shouldn't be any sewage or manure runoff. Beyond that, he honestly doesn't know.

After a moment of foggy-headed indecision, Clay sighs and starts wearily stripping off his gear and most of his clothing. He sets his Glock on the bank within reach, and then he slowly, painfully crawls out into the small stream and eases down onto his back, letting the creek flow over him. In addition to hopefully soaking out most of the dirt, he's hoping the cold water will alleviate some of the inflammation in his back.

The thing about swelling and bruising is that they're not great things to have anywhere near your spinal cord. If Clay wants to be able to keep moving tomorrow, he needs to try to minimize the swelling - which will likely progress overnight if he doesn't do something to control it. With no access to helpful things like ice packs or a course of oral steroids, this is the best he can come up with.

The night around him is quiet. For all that he intends to stay awake, maintain awareness of his environment, Clay ends up drifting out for a while. When he opens his eyes again, he's shivering with cold and the first hint of pale dawn is starting to filter through the deep canopy overhead.

He's freezing, but also a little clearer-headed after the unscheduled nap, and his headache has subsided to a faint throb at the base of his skull. His back feels better and the cold has at least numbed the formerly searing pain in his side. The wound looks more or less clean now, or as close as he's going to get it, so he drags himself out of the water, dries off as best he can, applies a topical antibiotic and a bandage, and then stiffly puts back on his clothes and gear. Before moving on, he refills his canteen, eats half a protein bar and doses up on a broad-spectrum antibiotic and an NSAID, which he thankfully does have on hand.

Clay knows he has thus far done a piss-poor job of thinking through his situation, thanks to basically passing out last night, so now he needs to come up with some kind of plan.

DEVGRU will try to send someone for him. He knows that much. He's out here alone right now, but not abandoned. Whether it's Romeo, Bravo, some other team, _someone_ will come. Problem is that there's a hell of a lot of territory to cover, and right now they've got no real way of knowing where he is.

The first thought that comes to mind is that he needs to find a way to signal them - but that idea is complicated by the fact that he's almost certainly being hunted by now. He guesses the insurgents would have started looking for him as soon as they failed to find a body.

So how can he send up a flare to DEVGRU that won't get him captured and/or killed?

While thinking that over, Clay reluctantly leaves the water source behind and finds better concealment in which to lie low through the heat of the day.

The good news is that, during the long afternoon, he comes up with a plan of sorts. It might be stupid as hell, but it's the best he's got right now.

The bad news is that, by the time dusk softens the sky, he's running a fever and his side has started throbbing with every heartbeat as though somebody is hitting it with a hammer.

Could have been the dirt, the water, both. The cause doesn't really matter now. All that matters is that the infection has come on quick and is shaping up to be ugly. There's no visible pus or drainage yet, but peeling back the bandage reveals that the wound is already surrounded by shiny, swollen red skin that's hot to the touch.

He'll keep taking the broad-spectrum antibiotic, but he has no idea if it will be able to get ahead of the infection, keep him on his feet. Keep him alive until someone can find him.

It will have to be good enough. He doesn't have anything else.

With the threat of potential incapacitation looming, it feels more urgent than ever that he set his plan into motion. As soon as full night has fallen, Clay loads up on painkillers, flips his NODs down, and heads up out of the trees toward higher ground. Leaving cover makes his skin crawl. He's counting on the darkness to shield him from view for long enough to do what he has to.

By the time he descends the hill and makes it back down into the jungle again, Clay is shaking with fever and the pain in his side is damn near bad enough to double him over. He grits his teeth, blinks away tears, and keeps moving anyway until he is well away from the edge of the tree line. He needs to stay in the general area so his boys can find him, while also remaining well enough concealed that the insurgents _can't_ find him.

Shivering and muddle-headed, he finds a place to hole up for the night, where he almost immediately passes out.

Hours later, just before dawn, he's kicked awake and blinks open gritty, swollen eyes to find himself surrounded by armed men.

Well. So much for that plan.

They yell at him. He pretends not to understand. One of them kicks him in the wounded side, and he clenches his jaw but the howl of agony makes it out through his gritted teeth anyway.

Two of the men haul him up, one to each arm, and carry him off. He lets his head hang down, his feet drag limply on the ground.

Everything hurts and there's too much motion. For a while, Clay loses track of where he is, what's happening. The movement finally stops, and someone ties his ankles and binds his hands in front of him. Then they throw water in his face, shockingly cold against his burning-hot skin.

With great effort, Clay peels his eyes open. His gear has been stripped away. He's sitting on the ground, propped up against the side of a small building that isn't much more than a shack. A few other shacks are scattered around nearby. The sky is bright and the air feels warm, but he shivers anyway.

The men who threw the water are smiling down at him. Clay really doesn't like the look of those smiles.

They ask questions. He shrugs. The bigger of the two punches him in the face with a fist that feels like a sledgehammer. Before the ringing in Clay's ears can clear up enough for him to hear what's being said, they're already hitting him again.

Inevitably, they target his side, which is when things really get unpleasant. It's a mercy when he finally passes out.

He must be out for a good while, because by the time he wakes up again, his entire body a shuddering mass of pain, it's dark outside and they've apparently lost interest for the moment and dumped him inside one of the shacks.

That concussion he was working on getting over? If the explosion didn't already bring it back for round two, the beating sure as hell did. His head throbs, his skin feels like it's on fire, he can't stop shaking, and he thinks he might throw up sometime soon. His mouth is so dry he can barely swallow.

After a while, a woman comes in to bring him a cup of water. Clay makes his eyes as sad as he possibly can and gestures at his side. In the light from the woman's lamp, he can see that the wound has broken open and is oozing blood and pus. The smell of it makes him want to gag.

The woman gives him an uncertain glance, then takes up her lamp and leaves. He doesn't expect her to come back, but she does, maybe a half hour later, bearing a bowl of warm water and a clean cloth. It hurts like hell, but he does his best to hold still while she cleans the wound with surprisingly gentle hands.

Once she's done, the woman picks up the bowl and cloth and slips away quickly and silently enough that Clay suspects she's hoping no one will find out she was kind to the prisoner.

Clay sips a little water, grateful that at least his hands are bound in front of him instead of behind. With nothing else to do, he curls up and falls into a miserable, fitful sleep for the rest of the night. He has recurrent, shimmering fever dreams of rescue, but when he opens his eyes, he's always still bound and alone.

A little past sunrise, his captors drag him back outside and toss him down in the patchy shade of a tree next to one of the shacks. For a while he's ignored again, and he drifts off to a place where nothing hurts.

The next time they come get him, it's to manhandle him out into the clearing in the middle of the ring of shacks. A whole group has gathered to watch, including a handful of women and children. Clay looks for the woman who helped him last night, but his vision is blurred and haloed, and he can't remember her face anyway.

He braces himself for the next beating.

And then he realizes that's not what's coming this time.

The two men dragging him shove him to his knees and then move back to a safe distance. A third man steps in front of him, holding Clay's own Glock.

Clay knows then. Before the man even raises the gun to point at the middle of his forehead, he knows.

He has been telling himself for years that he is at peace with the idea of making the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. It would have been difficult to achieve tier one status and to endure as an elite operator without being able, at least on some level, to accept that possibility.

Now that it comes down to it, though, Clay realizes he really isn't ready for this at all. There were so many more goals to accomplish, things he still wanted to do with his life. And him going out like this, it's going to hurt his team bad. He never wanted to do that to them.

But he is hurting and so, so tired, and maybe it's time to rest. Maybe it's better that it end like this, in a single sharp instant, rather than slow and drawn-out and agonizing.

The mouth of the gun barrel looks like a doorway to somewhere new, to a place he wasn't planning to visit so soon.

He's a Navy SEAL. He's a member of Bravo team. This is just his next mission, and he will not be afraid.

_To those before us. To those amongst us. To those we'll see on the other side._

_Lord, let me not prove unworthy of my brothers._


	5. Chapter 5

When they watch Spenser go down, he's nothing more than an infrared blip on a screen. The actual moment it happened is long over and done with, hours in the past.

After the footage ends, Ray spends some time just staring at the blank screen. His teammate's life might not have ended right then and there, but he can't help but wonder if he will ever see Clay get back up again.

He tunes back in just in time to hear Kairos's calm, even-keeled, eminently reasonable little speech about working together. Miraculously, it actually seems to have had the desired effect, which is a relief. Ray might eventually have worked up the energy to be the adult in the room, but he'll be grateful if he doesn't have to. That role comes less naturally to him than he tries to let on, and some days it's especially difficult and exhausting to tamp down the worry and the anger so he can fill it.

Today? Today is one of the hard days. He'll take all the help he can get.

Now that all the blame-slinging seems more or less past at least for the moment, they need to try to figure out how the hell they're going to find Spenser and bring him home - preferably alive. Mandy is leaning hard on every asset she's got, has her people monitoring all available chatter, but so far she says there's been nothing of interest. If Clay has been captured, it's being kept very quiet.

Brock suggests putting in at Spenser's last known location and letting Cerb track him, but Blackburn immediately shakes his head, pointing out that trying to go back there right now would be a suicide mission, and he's not losing anybody else. It's especially not a risk he's willing to take when there's so much uncertainty about its likelihood of success - if Clay has been moved by vehicle, for example, trying to track his scent trail would be pointless.

They keep sending drones, scouring satellite photos, but it's just too large an expanse of sparsely populated hills and jungle for that strategy to offer any realistic chance of locating one man who, if he is still free, will be trying his best to hide.

There's a handful of local villages, some of them barely more than loose collections of shacks. They keep an eye on them, looking for increased activity that might indicate something is going down. Nothing there either.

Ray is watching both Sonny and Jason progress toward frustration-fueled meltdowns that Kairos might not be able to curtail this time when Mandy abruptly marches into the room with a bright-eyed, tight-lipped look of triumph.

She brings up a photograph on the screen: a completely ordinary hilltop, mostly barren but for rocks and sparse brown dry-season grass.

"What're we lookin' at there, Mandy?" Sonny drawls.

Mandy gives him a secretive smile. "Absolutely nothing. That's yesterday evening. This was taken today." She brings up a second picture of the same location.

Everyone leans forward. Ray tilts his head to the side. For a few seconds, no one speaks.

Then Sonny says, "Is that…"

Jason laughs, sounding a bit shaky with relief. "Well, that's one way to get our attention."

The meaningless jumble of stones has been reorganized into an approximation of the Bravo team insignia: rough, but clearly recognizable to anyone who knows what it is they're looking at - and, possibly just as importantly, likely _not_ recognizable to anyone who doesn't.

Valdez gives a low whistle. "Holy shit. Your boy is still out there."

The hope that grips Ray's heart is almost dangerous in its intensity, so much so that he has to remind himself that this, while promising, doesn't guarantee anything. "Yeah, he is," he says. "And he just told us where to find him."

After that, it's just a matter of gearing up and getting their asses to the place where Bravo Six is hopefully waiting for them.

It's well past dark by the time Bravo and Romeo make it to the hilltop, which might be a good thing for their chances of remaining undiscovered by any unfriendlies who might be watching.

Cerberus almost immediately picks up Clay's scent. Vibrating with joyous enthusiasm, the dog leads them down the hillside and into the heavily wooded valley below.

When Cerb makes a beeline for a secluded hidey hole in thick underbrush, Ray really believes that this might be it, that they've found their boy - but of course it isn't that easy. The little nest does appear to have been occupied recently, but now sits silent and empty.

It takes Cerberus a few minutes of running to and fro, nose to the ground, but he picks the scent back up and they're off again.

The rest of the night proceeds much the same. Cerberus periodically loses the trail, each time tightening Ray's chest with fear, but the dog always manages to find Spenser's scent again. Ray sends up a silent prayer of thanks that it's dry season, because if it weren't, rain would have almost certainly washed away the trail by now.

Eventually, Ray can't help but start to wonder if they're going to like what they find at the end of this journey, because it doesn't make sense for Spenser to have voluntarily gone this far from the place where he left the sign. And if Bravo Six truly is injured, as the drone feed seemed to indicate, Ray isn't even sure he _could_ have covered this much ground under his own power.

Those fears are seemingly confirmed not long after dawn, when the scent trail ends at a small village in the middle of nowhere.

It may be small and remote, but it's surrounded by a perimeter of heavily armed guards, and God only knows how many more combatants are concealed within the collection of shacks. It's a good bet that Bravo and Romeo are significantly outnumbered - and if Spenser really is somewhere in there, going in guns blazing is probably an excellent way to get him shot before they can even reach him.

They withdraw to a safe distance and huddle, trying to come up with a plan. There's a technical parked outside the village perimeter that Sonny wants to blow up as a distraction; Romeo Four, a short, high-energy man named Collins, immediately seconds that idea. He's apparently as much of an explosives enthusiast as Sonny is.

Jason accepts that as a possible strategy, but wants to confirm Spenser's presence, if possible, before committing to a firefight. To that end, he sends Ray up a tree as overwatch.

It doesn't take long before Ray sees exactly what he's looking for.

Inhale. Exhale.

"Bravo One, I've got eyes on Bravo Six."

"_Good copy,"_ Jason responds, with only the faintest hint of emotion. "_Condition?"_

"Conscious. Probably not ambulatory." Ray watches as Spenser is hauled out of a shack. Clay makes a cursory attempt to walk as they drag him along, but after they dump him to the ground, he just curls up a little and doesn't move again. Ray would like to think he's playing possum, but the shivering that's visible even from this distance makes that seem unlikely.

"_Understood. Watch him, Ray."_

"Copy that."

Jason orders Quinn and Collins to get moving on that distraction, while the rest of them stay back, poised to take action as soon as the guards' attention is focused on their suddenly exploded vehicle.

Turns out they don't have that long.

Watching the scene that's unfolding in the village, Ray asks tightly, "Bravo Three, you in position yet?"

"_That's a negative."_ Sonny sounds slightly out of breath.

Jason apparently picks up on the tension in Ray's voice. "_Talk to me, Bravo Two."_

"Don't like where this is going," Ray says. He breathes, staring through the scope, telling himself not to overreact.

But then they force Clay to his knees and step back, and it becomes very clear exactly where this is headed.

Everything slows down, each thought clear and sharp as Ray's mind spins through possibilities. Could this be a bluff? Intimidation tactic? If it is and Ray jumps the gun, he could get somebody - maybe even Spenser himself - unnecessarily killed.

His instincts tell him it isn't a bluff. He's about to be watching his youngest teammate's execution.

Ray's words come out choppy with urgency. "Boss, we're out of time. They're gonna kill Bravo Six."

"_Copy. Handle it,"_ Jason responds immediately, sounding tight and tense. "_Bravo Three, Romeo Four, keep at it. All other elements, on me. Prepare to move in."_

Ray only vaguely registers the other operators' responses. His world has narrowed to his own breathing, the distance, the wind, his finger on the trigger, and what he can see through the scope.

As long as he lives, he'll never forget Spenser's expression when he realizes what's coming. They've hurt the kid bad - his face is busted and swollen, and he's trembling so hard he can barely stay upright - but still he lifts his chin in defiance. Refuses to close his eyes.

The would-be executioner raises the gun, makes some sort of proclamation, and starts to slide his finger toward the trigger.

Ray shoots him in the head.

All hell breaks loose.

"_Go, go, go!"_ Jason orders, and he and the others move in.

The crowd scatters, civilians diving for shelter while combatants scramble to respond to the unexpected incursion. Ray busies himself covering Bravo Six, reaching out and touching anybody who looks like they might be thinking about trying to finish the execution.

For being as bad off as he is, Clay does an admirable job of helping himself on that front. He throws himself down flat, manages to get his hands on the executioner's dropped pistol, and then rolls over and starts firing.

Ray looks away from Spenser long enough to take out a target, and when he glances back, the kid has disappeared.

In the crossfire and the chaos and the dust thrown up by running feet, Ray can't find him again.

He's reaching for his radio to alert Jason when a deep, teeth-rattling _boom_ shudders through the ground, setting Ray's tree swaying and signaling that Bravo Three and Romeo Four have successfully completed their task. Better late than never.

The brief window of shock and confusion caused by the explosion is enough to give Bravo and Romeo the upper hand, and they rapidly and efficiently eliminate the remaining combatants. When Hayes gives the order to cease fire, the ramshackle village falls suddenly, eerily silent amidst the haze of dust and gunsmoke.

The fight might be over, but the tension that seizes Ray's chest doesn't let up. He keys his radio. "Bravo One, be advised, I do not have eyes on Bravo Six. Say again, Bravo Six is not secure."

Jason makes a sharp, frustrated sound, then orders everyone to start looking. With Sonny and Collins's task completed and no pressing need for Ray to stay on overwatch, Hayes calls in the remaining three operators to help with the search as well.

There's a gradually growing sense of panic as they search, one that only heightens when even Cerb seems confused by overlapping scent trails and initially comes up with nothing. Did someone make it out with Spenser while they weren't looking? After all this, did they lose him anyway?

There are a few survivors, a little group of terrified women and children who have crammed together into one of the buildings, but they mutely shake their heads when asked if they've seen the prisoner.

In the end, it's Summer Kairos who discovers Clay curled up beneath one of the shacks, arms over his head, completely motionless and unresponsive to their calls.

Locking down the panic, they carefully move Spenser out and lay him down where Trent and Romeo's medic can get a better look at him. The kid's skin is shockingly hot, and he doesn't react at all to being lifted.

As the medics descend, Ray watches the shallow, rapid rise and fall of Clay's chest and is gripped with sudden fear that he'll die without ever knowing he was rescued. For some reason, it feels very important that he at least wake up long enough to really understand that they came for him. That he isn't alone.

After quickly checking airway and circulation, Trent cuts away Spenser's filthy T-shirt and breathes, "Oh, _Jesus,"_ which is fairly high on the list of things you never want to hear a medic say.

One good look at the wound in Spenser's side, and Ray understands the reaction. If Bravo Six doesn't already have sepsis, he probably soon will - but based on the rapid respiration, low blood pressure and lack of response, Ray guesses they're already there.

While Trent works on Spenser's side, Romeo's medic checks the rest of their patient over and reports a lot of contusions, a couple possible fractures and a likely head injury, but nothing more critical than the infection.

When the medics make it clear that they need more time to work on Spenser before moving him, Jason calls in to HAVOC base to request an updated ISR sitrep of the area, exhaling in visible relief when Mandy reports that all looks clear for the time being. Seems Clay's captors didn't have a chance to call in backup before they got wiped out.

Ray stands back and watches as Sonny, pale and shaken and blinking suspiciously frequently, manages to worm his way in close enough to grab Spenser's hand and hold on tight.

He watches as the medics start pushing antibiotics and fluids, hoping to get the kid's blood pressure up, improve tissue perfusion.

He watches, counting breaths, praying that they continue.

_We came for you, brother. We got you. Now all you have to do for us is just hang on._


	6. Chapter 6

Clay faces what's coming with his eyes wide open, which is why he sees the exact instant when his would-be executioner's head explodes.

The man drops, and then there's chaos.

Offered unexpected hope, Clay does what he's spent his entire life doing: he fights back.

He throws himself flat, ignoring the blinding spear of pain through his side, and worms forward until he can get his hands on the dropped Glock. Shoots the first tango he sees who isn't paying attention to him.

There's dirt and sand kicking up everywhere, and the air seems full of bees. Clay scuttles backward, staying as low as he can, and keeps firing until the gun clicks empty.

Cover. He needs cover or he's going to die anyway, and that would be a shame after someone came all this way to get him.

He scrambles, seeking shelter.

Just after he finds it, there's a tremendous _boom,_ the earth shakes, and Clay tumbles into darkness.

He wakes up an unknown time later. His hearing is the first thing to come back, before vision or sensation or the ability to so much as twitch a finger. There are no gunshots or explosions, just voices, sounding distant and so garbled that he can't tell what language they're speaking.

As he gradually regains some hazy awareness of his body, Clay realizes there are hands touching his side, his neck; pressing something sharp into the crook of his elbow. He doesn't know who the hands belong to, if they're planning to hurt him. He tries weakly to push them away.

The voices abruptly stop talking to each other. Someone cradles Clay's face. The sound of his own name swims into his distorted hearing.

"...hear me? Come on, Clay. Answer me."

That's Trent. Clay sucks in a choppy breath that almost turns into a sob, because if Trent is here with him, then he's safe. Nobody is going to hurt him anymore. Well, not unless it's necessary to save his life.

"...where it hurts?" Trent is asking. He gives Clay's cheek a sharp pat, almost a slap. "Focus. Come on. Talk to me. Where are you injured?"

Clay tries to lick his lips. His dry tongue rasps over cracked, dusty skin. He winces, then croaks, "Side."

"We're taking care of that," Trent assures him calmly. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

A shred of memory floats to the surface. "Back. Shot."

Trent goes still. "You were shot in the back?"

"Yeah. Armor…" He starts to drift off again, but is jolted back to reality when multiple sets of hands carefully steady him and roll him onto his uninjured side, presumably so Trent can get a good look at his back.

The movement hurts, and the breeze on his bare skin makes him shiver. Clay must make some sort of sound, because one of the hands pats his hair and Sonny's voice says, "I know. It's okay. You're okay."

For some inexplicable reason, the sound of that soft Texas drawl damn near makes Clay start crying like a little kid. If any tears do manage to escape, well, no one calls him on it.

They ease him back down, and then Trent pokes, prods and annoys him until the medic is apparently satisfied that Clay can still feel his legs, wiggle his toes.

Clay could have told him that. He figures the bruise on his back is probably not especially pretty to look at, but it also isn't the real problem here. That would be the seemingly innocuous through-and-through that has left his side attempting to rot away while he's still inconveniently attached to it.

There's a lot of motion and hurried discussion, but it mostly swirls around him without really registering. After a while, Clay drifts out again.

The next time he swims back up to consciousness, he's moving, in what feels like a vehicle, and also being ranted at.

"-kind of _idiot_ move like going off on your own without _telling anybody!_ I swear to God, kid, if you ever do that again-"

Sonny sounds like he's been going for a while, and his tirade doesn't seem the least bit hampered by the lack of response. Even though he's keeping his voice relatively low, the sound of it still crashes like cymbals against Clay's eardrums, reverberating inside his pounding head. Trying to remember how arms work so he can get his hands up to cover his ears, Clay mumbles, "Sonny. Loud."

As soon as he moves his arms a little, he feels the telltale pinch and tug of an IV, and someone's hands - presumably Sonny's - pin his wrists down.

"Clay?" The Texan's voice has completely changed, going from terse and frustrated back to quiet and gentle like it was before. "You still in there?"

Clay gives a short, jerky nod, but can't muster the energy to actually open his eyes. He's unbearably cold, he can't get enough air, his skin feels clammy, and his swollen side still throbs with every heartbeat. If he could scrape together enough focus, he'd probably be begging for morphine right now. As it is, he just floats through a sea of vague, foggy misery, trying to place where he is and what the hell happened to leave him in this condition.

He's pretty sure he's in a truck or van, likely traveling over a bumpy road judging by all the jolts that keep sending flashes of agony through the side of his abdomen. Despite the intense, bone-deep chill that has him unable to stop shivering, Clay can feel that there's a light blanket lying over his skin. His feet are elevated.

Apparently satisfied that Clay isn't going to pull out his IV, Sonny turns loose of his wrists, shifting to squeezing his hand instead. That sends a muted spike of alarm through Clay's mind, because if Sonny is openly holding his hand while he's conscious, things are probably pretty bad. Like life-threatening bad.

"...Happened?" Clay manages to ask.

"You passed out from that little infection in your side there," Sonny tells him. "Trent's takin' care of it, though. You're gonna be fine." When Clay doesn't respond, Sonny adds in a gently chiding tone, "You prob'ly shouldn't've gone wallerin' in the mud with a bullet wound."

Oh. Yeah. Now he remembers. Getting shot, getting captured, almost getting executed.

"Not mud," Clay mumbles. Hey, he strung two whole words together. That's an improvement. "Dust. Then creek."

"Dirt and water equal mud. Same difference."

"Noooo." Clay doesn't even know why he's bothering to argue, other than just out of sheer annoyance that Sonny won't even let him _die_ in peace.

He must have said some of that out loud, because Sonny's grip on his hand tightens. "Not gonna die, Clay," the Texan tells him fiercely. "You hear me? We got you. You're not gonna die."

Clay isn't sure whether he believes that, but he nods again anyway.

Trent joins the party. "Hey, Spense. Can you look at me?" He's still using his businesslike medic tone, but he also keeps his voice quiet enough to avoid worsening Clay's relentless headache.

Clay tries. He just never knew eyelids could be quite so damn heavy.

When he is finally able to crack his eyes open just a sliver, he sees Trent's blurry face hovering over him. The medic smiles a little and says, "Hey. How are you feeling?"

"Cold," he responds. "...Not dead."

Trent squeezes his shoulder. "Yeah, you can thank Ray for that."

Clay suddenly realizes there's something important he needs to say, right now - because no matter what Sonny tries to claim, he's pretty sure there's a decent chance he's not gonna walk away from this one.

"Thanks. All of you." He is wracked by a sudden, uncontrollable shudder, and can't quite bite back the whimper that escapes when the movement jars his side. Out of breath, he gasps shallowly and manages to add, "Found me."

Trent leans down, grips Clay's upper arms and tells him evenly and intensely, "Yes, we did, and now we're gonna get you out of here, okay? You just hang in there until we reach the LZ. They've got a helo waiting to take you to the hospital."

A man Clay vaguely recognizes as the medic from Romeo team fiddles with his IV, hooking up a fresh bag of fluids. Clay watches for a minute, then lets his eyes slide back closed, since no one is hounding him to keep them open.

If Romeo's medic is here helping take care of him, then that means they didn't all die when that VBIED went off. Hopefully none of them did and they're all okay. Please let them be okay.

Trent coaches Clay on breathing, trying to get him to inhale and exhale more slowly and deeply. He tries, but it's hard. His chest burns and his focus keeps slipping and he is so goddamn cold.

When Trent gives up on the breathing thing and starts just calmly repeating like a mantra that he's safe and they're going to take care of him, Clay realizes that things are probably going badly. He doesn't really have the energy to care.

Trent disappears for a minute, and then other members of Clay's team start showing up. The sound of their voices gives him the motivation he needs to get his eyes back open so he can see their faces. For some reason, it feels important that he look at them.

Jason tells him, in a tone that makes it very clear he's giving an order, to _Hang in there, you hear me, Bravo Six?_ Ray assures him that _We're all right here with you. Everybody's okay._

Brock brings over Cerberus, who whines quietly, licks Clay's face, and settles down at his uninjured side. Romeo's medic mumbles something under his breath, but then shuts up upon becoming the target of the bone-chilling glare Brock reserves for terrorists and people who insult his dog.

It takes every bit of strength and focus Clay can muster, but he manages to lift and move his hand just enough to thread his fingers into the dog's fur. The world keeps trying to slip away from him; there's darkness growing like a billow of smoke behind his eyes. He holds onto Cerberus like an anchor and he tries not to slide into nothing.

His team, he knows why Trent went to get them. Why they all came and made sure he knew that they were here.

In this line of work, if you get a chance at closure, at any sort of a gentle goodbye that's softer and more peaceful and less sudden than a bullet or a bomb, you take it and be grateful.

But that doesn't mean you give up a single second before you have to. As long as there's a chance, any chance at all, you hang on - so Clay clings to Cerberus's fur and to Sonny's hand, and he fights like hell to hold off the dark.

Maybe his breathing is shallow and weak and too rapid and he's doing it all wrong, but goddammit he _is_ still breathing. That's gonna have to be good enough because it's the best he can manage right now.

He holds out until they reach the LZ, and then Sonny and Cerberus are abruptly pulled away from him and he's swarmed by people he doesn't know, all of whom seem to be yelling back and forth about things like pyrexia and hypotension and sats. Someone straps an oxygen mask to his face. All the noise echoes in his ears and makes his head spin, and he can't figure out where his team has gone.

The strangers load him onto a helo, where it's even louder, so loud that he can't hear their voices anymore. Clay tries to lift his head to see where Trent is, to find out why Sonny has let go of his hand, but there's a strap across his forehead holding him down. The pressure of it makes his head hurt, right up until every bit of the pain and confusion and distress starts to swirl away into a gentle, drifting void. He knows it would be so easy to just follow it there. To rest.

_Some things you can't fight, so you don't. You give up and say goodbye._

No.

He tried to get his stupid ass killed, and his team came for him. They were on the other side of the world. It wasn't even their mission. They came anyway.

After all that, after everything they have put up with from him, taught him, done for him, the absolute least he can do for them is just keep fighting.

So that's what he does.


	7. Chapter 7

Ever since finding out that Clay Spenser's mission with Romeo went every bit as badly as he'd feared it would, Jason Hayes has managed to (mostly) keep calm by reminding himself that he and his team have a job to do now: they need to find Spenser, alive, and bring him home. So long as they can do that, everything will be good.

When Ray reports that he has eyes on, Jason takes what feels like his first full breath in several days.

It sounds like Bravo Six is pretty banged up - not unexpected, given the circumstances - but alive and conscious.

Now all they have to do is just get to him.

Of course, as soon as Jason thinks that, everything almost immediately goes to shit, and the kid's impending execution forces them to move in before they're ready.

That doesn't turn out as badly as it could have, because Jason might be pissed off at Romeo right now, but they're still damn good operators. Between the extra rifles and the assistance of an explosive distraction provided by Sonny and Romeo Four, they manage to clear the village in relatively short order.

There's a few minutes of growing panic while they search, but in the end Kairos discovers Spenser huddled unconscious beneath a shack, his fingers still curled around his Glock, even though the mag is empty.

While Trent and Romeo's medic start checking Clay over, Jason looks down at the Glock, turns it over in his hands, and tries to figure out how the hell the kid ended up getting it back after being captured and damn near executed.

When the pieces click into place, he swears, quiet and vicious.

They were going to kill Bravo Six with his own goddamn gun.

Any desire to indulge himself in fury is curtailed by the reality of Spenser's condition, because they may have found their kid but the fight is far from over. Jason is familiar enough with his medic to know what that intent, controlled body language means, even before Trent says anything at all.

Spenser is unresponsive and his vitals have tanked, more than likely due to sepsis from the untreated gunshot wound. While pushing fluids to try to get him stabilized well enough for transport, Trent reports that Clay needs a hospital, as fast as they can safely get him to one.

Jason calls it in, relating the severity of Spenser's condition; the fact that they need some time to get him stable enough to move. Mandy quickly responds that the area is clear. Blackburn, steady and calm, promises to have a fully equipped medical team and a helo waiting at the LZ.

Jason signs off, and waits, and wishes there were something useful he could do other than just staying out of the way while the medics handle it.

Nobody is expecting Clay to wake up this side of a hospital and a lot of antibiotics, but as soon as the IV fluids have boosted his blood pressure to a marginally less terrible state, he does. Starts trying to struggle with all the strength of a starved kitten. It takes them a minute to get it through to him that he's safe; even once they do, it's clear that he's hanging onto awareness and composure by his fingernails.

When they have to roll Clay so Trent can check his back, he whimpers a little and a few tears escape. No one mentions them. After the kid has lapsed back into unconsciousness, Sonny casually reaches out and brushes them away.

Once Spenser is deemed okay to be moved, they steal a couple of vans - it's not like this particular group of insurgents will be needing them again anytime soon - and head for the LZ. One of the vans contains Romeo's medic, all of Bravo, and Kairos, who volunteers to drive; the rest of Romeo team takes the other.

Jason, Ray, Brock and Cerberus take up as little space as possible to give the medics room to work. The only one exempt from the 'stay out of the way' rule is Sonny, because he seems likely to have the best chance of keeping Clay calm if the kid wakes up scared and confused and tries to hurt himself further.

They're maybe 20 mikes out from the LZ when Trent comes over with a look on his face that makes Jason's heart fall straight into his gut.

It isn't often that their medic is at a loss for words. Trent may be a bit on the quiet side, but when there's something to say, he says it. Now, though, he hesitates for a few terrifying seconds before just calmly telling them that they should go talk to Clay.

Without asking any questions, they do as he says.

Spenser is obviously beyond the point of being able to respond much, but he gets his eyes open and keeps them that way, fixing his gaze on each of his teammates in turn, visibly fighting to make sure they know he can hear them. When Cerberus settles down next to him, the kid manages to move his hand enough to tangle his fingers in the dog's fur. Jason looks at that grip, and all he can see is the way Mikey used to cling to his favorite blanket when he was sick, and he feels like his chest might cave in.

When Ray first talked him into drafting this particular rookie, Jason was bone-deep afraid that this moment would come. That he would get attached and invested and then end up having to say another goodbye he wasn't remotely ready for, especially not so soon after Nate.

_He does not know his own limitations. True believers, they get people killed. They get themselves killed._

Since those early days, though, he has gradually let himself relax. Let himself trust that they've managed to get Spenser's true-believer, blaze-of-glory tendencies under control; that the kid has changed, grown up, mellowed.

And maybe Clay has to some extent, but not enough, because here they are: right at the place Jason feared ending up.

He tries to shake himself out of it, because Bravo Six is still breathing, and if Jason knows anything about the bottomless well of stubbornness contained within his youngest team member, Clay will not give up without one hell of a fight.

Soon enough they're handing the kid off to the medical team for transport to the hospital. The rest of Bravo just stands back and watches as the helo carrying their rookie disappears into the distance. Ray, who can pretty much always read Jason no matter how stoic he thinks he's being, casually eases over to give his team leader's arm an encouraging squeeze.

After that, there's nothing to do but wearily climb into the second helo for the long ride back to base. Despite having been up all night, nobody sleeps; they don't try to talk either. There's a lot of blank staring. At one point Jason accidentally catches Valdez's gaze and gives him a slight nod, which is returned after just a hint of a pause.

Blackburn meets the teams when they arrive, making a beeline straight for Valdez and the other remaining members of Romeo. "Bridger's condition is stable," he tells them. "He's being transported stateside for further treatment." He gives them a faint, encouraging smile. "He's gonna be okay."

Valdez actually sways with relief. Romeo Four, a high-energy little grasshopper of a man who's acting uncharacteristically subdued and mature at the moment, puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

After they degear and before they head in for debriefing and AARs, Jason forces himself to go over to Valdez. He figures it's as good a time as any, given that the Romeo 2IC still appears to be buoyed up by the good news about his team leader.

"Glad to hear about Bridge," Jason tells him, receiving a nod in response. Valdez doesn't look exactly hostile, but he obviously isn't going to make this easy either; he waits, letting the pause between them stretch until Jason awkwardly continues, "Listen, about before. I may have … come on a little strong."

Valdez gives a one-shoulder shrug. "You were worried. I get it."

"Still. I know you didn't want to leave my guy behind. Shouldn't have said otherwise."

Valdez nods in apparent acceptance of the almost-apology. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry we had to, and I hope he pulls through. Seems like a tough kid."

"He is, and he will," Jason says, and tries very hard to believe it.

The waiting sucks. When they get put on a plane back to the States, there's still no news on Clay, and it leaves them all antsy and unsettled. Some more than others (not naming any names, but it's Sonny).

Even on DEVGRU's elite level, a surprising amount of warfare involves inaction. It's not uncommon for there to be hours of stillness capped off by a few explosive minutes of active combat. Not all waiting is created equal, though. Waiting for a target to appear or for a battle to begin? They can all handle that. This helpless, long-distance waiting to find out if a brother has survived, it gets to them. To all of them.

After they touch down, Eric disappears for a few minutes. When he comes back, Jason knows, before his squadron commander even says a word, what the news is going to be.

Wearing an openly relieved expression, Blackburn tells them, "Clay has been stabilized and is doing well. They're gonna wait a day or two before moving him, just to make sure, but it looks like he's gonna be all right."

They are all so exhausted and strung out that the reaction is surprisingly subdued. There are a few tired smiles. Trent exhales sharply. Sonny turns away, rubbing his face with both hands, pushing his baseball cap back. Jason feels most of the tension go out of his body, out of the room, as though it just got sucked down a drain.

Later, after Clay is back home at the Navy hospital and they've all had a chance to go see him for themselves and ruffle his hair and explain just how much he is never allowed to go off on his own ever again under any circumstances, Jason drops by to see Bridger.

Romeo's leader looks a little surprised at first, maybe a hint uncertain; then he gives Jason a pained, washed-out smile. "Heard you got your boy back."

"That we did. It was way too damn close, but he's gonna be okay." Jason clears his throat. Knowing Bridger's team will have told him all about the little confrontation in Africa by now, he forces himself to add, "Your guys probably made the right call out there. And they did good. We might not have gotten Bravo Six back alive without their help."

Bridger nods acknowledgement, taking that as the peace offering it is. After a minute, he offers one of his own: "Pretty sure I fucked up with him."

Jason's eyebrows go up. Like Jason himself, Bridger is not the kind of man who makes a habit of openly admitting to having been wrong. "How do you mean?"

Bridger shifts, letting out a muffled cough that makes him wince. "Shut him down pretty hard when he tried to make a suggestion in the briefing." He pauses. "Brought up his dad, too."

Jason full-body winces at that. "_Jesus,_ Bridge."

The man sighs. "Yeah. Not my finest moment. He just ... rubbed me the wrong way, I guess."

"Yeah, he does that. I ended up pretty much trying to strangle him the first time he ran with Bravo."

Bridger snorts a quiet laugh that turns into a groan. After he gets his breath back, he says, "Still. Can't help but feel like I set him up to head off on his own like that instead of just coming to me. I gave him no reason to think I'd listen." He drops his gaze and admits with surprising honesty, "I regret that."

Jason nods, waiting until Bridger looks back up. "Well, you damn near died trying to go get him, so as far as I'm concerned, we're good." Gently, he adds, "Don't think I'm the one you need to be apologizing to, though."

Bridger's groan this time has little to do with physical pain.

Jason laughs at him. "Come on, man. I think he'll surprise you. Might be a cocky little shit sometimes, but he is definitely not Ash Spenser."

"Yeah, I've started to pick up on that," Bridger says with a faint smile. "And I guess I can see why you drafted him." After a pensive beat, he adds with conviction, "You can keep him, though."

"Oh, we will," Jason responds, with just as much conviction.

After this little adventure, they might never let the damn kid out of their sight again.

* * *

All that's left now is the epilogue. :)


	8. Epilogue

In the aftermath of the less-than-ideal mission in Africa, Summer does his best to keep up with the fallout.

He quickly discovers that it's much more effective to seek updates on Bridger's health from Valdez rather than trying to go directly to Romeo One himself. As it turns out, Bridger, who according to Valdez is 'probably made out of scrap iron and old tires,' recovers a lot faster than anyone expected and is back in the field after just a few months.

Then there's Clay Spenser. To Summer's surprise, the Bravo team member who takes the time to text him terse, often grammatically questionable daily updates on Clay's recovery is, of all people, Sonny Quinn. Said updates don't even include insults, most of the time. Okay, sometimes.

Seriously, receiving a text that reads '_kid went home today you Hippie bastard'_ should not make Summer smile nearly as much as it does.

As it turns out, he doesn't get called in to run with Bravo again until nearly eight weeks later, by which time Spenser has recovered and returned to active duty.

While they're gearing up before the mission, Bravo Six keeps gradually migrating closer in to Summer's space. Finally, in a moment when there's nobody else around to hear, Spenser shifts his weight, draws a breath, and says, "Listen, I'm sorry for the way things went down with Romeo. I know that had to have sucked."

Summer looks at him for a minute. "Clay," he replies gently, "you don't need to apologize. You might have saved all of our lives back there."

Clay shakes his head. "If I'd just gone to Bridger about it instead of running off on my own, maybe we could have gotten the hell out before any of that shit went down, and all of us could have just walked away."

Summer would imagine that's a line of reasoning Spenser has been hearing on repeat from his teammates as they seek to ensure that Bravo Six will never pull another stunt like that again.

He thinks it through, and then he shrugs. "Hey, maybe, but we'll never know. What we _do_ know is that, with the way it did play out, everybody survived. All of us got to come home." He waits for Clay to look at him before saying sincerely, "It's all good, brother."

The smile Summer receives in return is a much more careful, fragile thing than he's accustomed to seeing from Bravo's brash, cocky, incorrigibly opinionated rookie.

Of course, Sonny Quinn immediately shows up and ruins the moment, but that's okay. It's still all good.

Summer Kairos grew up with a father who was always very good about taking his struggles seriously. The man understood that small issues can feel very big to children, and that teaching them healthy ways to weather those little storms can help provide them with a blueprint, a solid foundation to work from when they are older and the storms get bigger.

Summer remembers one particular day when he was maybe 11 years old and was devastated over a falling-out with a friend. His father told him, _The hard days will always come. Sometimes you will feel like you're drowning, and you won't be able to do anything at all to make that feeling go away. When that happens, because it will, the important thing is that you learn to keep your head above the water. If you can't fight the waves, then just hang on tight and let them wash over you, and never, ever forget that they will recede, and when they do, you will still be here._

Well, this particular set of waves has receded, and they are all of them still here: safe, alive, at peace, and in sync with their purpose.

Summer smiles to himself, and then, like his mama taught him, he heads out into the world to do what he can.

* * *

As always, thank you all for reading. ❤️


End file.
